Henry Samueli

FEATURED ARTICLES ABOUT HENRY SAMUELI

The Broadcom Corp., an Irvine-based company chaired by one of Newport-Mesa’s most prominent philanthropists, agreed to pay a $12-million penalty today to the United States Securities and Exchange Commission in response to charges of illegal backdating. The commission’s complaint, filed in U.S. District Court, alleges that Broadcom falsified its reported income by backdating employee and officer stock options from June 1998 to May 2003. Efforts to reach a Broadcom representative for comment were unsuccessful, but the commission said in a release that the company had neither denied nor admitted to the charges.

Dr. Steven C. George is the new founding director of a new cardiovascular center at UCI’s Henry Samueli School of Engineering. George will take the new post at the Edwards Lifesciences Center for Advanced Cardiovascular Technology on July 1. George has led the UCI biomedical engineering department since 2002. Under George’s supervision, ABET Inc. accredited the department’s undergraduate biomedical engineering program. This makes UCI one of only two universities in California to offer an accredited bioengineering undergraduate program, according to UCI. The Edwards Lifesciences Center is a multidisciplinary center founded in 2007, which is dedicated to research on heart and vascular diseases and advanced cardiovascular device technology.

The UC system is considering a change in name for some universities that have schools named after billionaire donor Henry Samueli, UC officials said. UCI and UCLA have engineering schools named for Samueli, who donated large sums to the schools to get them off the ground. But Samueli recently pleaded guilty to lying to financial regulators concerning the backdating of stock options given to employees at his Irvine-based Broadcom company. With that news, the general counsel of the university will meet to determine whether Samueli’s name stays, a UC spokesperson said.

Local benefit concert for African children The Moses Kazibwe Memorial Fund, a Costa Mesa-based nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the lives of African children, will hold its third OC for Africa All Rock 'n' Roll benefit concert Friday. Several local bands — including Two Tone Tantrum and Alpha Vertigo — and a disc jockey will play for visitors from 4 to 11 p.m. at eVocal, a creative arts lifestyle boutique in Costa Mesa, with all proceeds going to the Moses Fund's project to bring milk to children whose mothers are HIV positive in Rwanda and Burundi.

UCI received a major boost when Emulex Corporation established an endowed chair with $1.5 million for the Henry Samueli School of Engineering. The funds will further engineering teaching and research efforts at the university with additional hirings. UCI?s engineering department is looking toward the future of ?compute infrastructure, storage networking, and the virtualization of IT resources.? ?Emulex is a strong supporter of education and educators,? said Jim McCluney, president and chief executive of Emulex Corp in a news release.

Engineering students at UC Irvine got a big boost of support Wednesday from a Costa Mesa software company that will enhance the school's knowledge of leading computer-aided engineering and simulation software. MSC.Software Corp. has awarded more than $9.6 million in software and services to the Henry Samueli School of Engineering and the School of Physical Sciences. The gift is part of MSC's continuing involvement with the school and includes support through 2004.

Engineers at UC Irvine have more options to consider now that a new department has been approved. Biomedical engineering is the fifth department to be added to the Henry Samueli School of Engineering. It is expected to enroll about 50 new undergraduates and 15 new graduate students this fall. The new department is situated in a hotbed of biomedical companies. There are 1,400 in Southern California, according to the California Healthcare Institute, which invested more than $850 million to research and develop new products in 2000.

Volcom, Inc. amends initial public offering Costa Mesa surf wear company Volcom, Inc. filed papers with the Securities and Exchange Commission Thursday that amended the company's initial public offering. According to the filing, Volcom plans to offer almost 470,000 shares to investors. Volcom's prospectus stated shares could be priced between $15 and $17. Volcom's plans to go public were first announced in April. The clothing company markets its goods primarily to teenagers attracted to surfing, skateboarding and snowboarding.

UCI has hired one of the prominent minds at MIT to lead the Henry Samueli School of Engineering, starting Sept. 1, the school announced Thursday. Rafael L. Bras will take over as the dean of the school this year, leaving behind his positions at his alma mater MIT, where he served as a professor, the associate director of the Center for Global Change Science and director of the Terrascope freshman alternative program. Bras has been published for his work in soil-vegetation-atmosphere system modeling, as well as other work, and has written more than 170 refereed journal publications.

A federal judge in Santa Ana has dismissed Newport billionaire Henry Samueli’s guilty plea after being convinced that the Broadcom co-founder did not deliberately lie to the Securities and Exchange Commission. Samueli, who owns the Anaheim Ducks, did not knowingly make false statements to the SEC when he and others were investigated for allegedly backdating stock options in the company, U.S. District Judge Cormac J. Carney announced in court Wednesday. Carney rejected Samueli’s earlier plea deal, which would have spared him jail time.